Abstract

We used the cBio portal to query the importance of key players in breast cancer. Telomerase (TERT) is an important protein that ensures successful immortalization of cancer cells. Immortalization is a key step to establish uncontrolled cell division. MYC is an oncogene that is very relevant in breast cancer. Our searches showed that both genes (TERT and MYC) are amplified in a high percent of patients. We wanted to explore if there are genetic events that co-occur with telomerase amplification. We found that NONO gene mutation had a high tendency of co-occurrence with telomerase amplification. We wanted to understand if this subset of tumors with mutation of NONO reveals any additional correlations. Our query revealed that PDE4DIP (Phosphodiesterase 4D interacting protein) is amplified concurrent with the NONO mutation. There is no notable cancer related data on PDE4DIP in publicly available peer-reviewed publication records (PubMed). However, when we queried PDE4DIP, we discovered that it is amplified in a large majority of the breast cancer cases. Thus, it is surprisingly more common than TERT or MYC amplification. We propose that it is very important to understand the relevance of PDE4DIP and NONO to breast cancer.